This is the most important song I’ve ever written, it’s a time capsule song. I will listen to it every day of my life if I need to. It’s honest to God the most important song I’ve ever written in my life, and it has the fewest words. I was in LA, and I was there for the summer, just writing tunes, and I was in the shower. And I don’t know where it came from, but it’s the damn truth you know, and I just sang, “gravity…is working against me.”
And I just want to say that my full-time job, being—this is true—being a musician is almost a side job to my full-time job of not screwing up. Because the world was devised to be pretty damn even, except for terminal illness, and things that people just absolutely… They’re just flukes and they’re… You know, I don’t know if they’re making up for something else way far away that they don’t deserve, but it all pretty much evens out.
And if you’re gonna do this thing and get paid, and you know, get a car over the phone, if you’re gonna do this stuff, something else is gonna happen that is gonna be a temptation to pull you off of it because the people that don’t have that going on, they’re hoping for that, cause that makes the world even. That makes them even, it makes you even, and where I am now in my life, I’m on a track where as soon as you get in a room, the room is full of things to take you out of the room. “Now that you’ve made it, here are a plethora of things you can do to not make it. Here are a… Here’s the Out door…” and… It’s a fill-in-the-blank you know. It’s like mad libs. It’s like:
[puts hand up to ear like a telephone] “Oh hey John, this is [person that plays… person in the room]… Umm, [person’s name, famous person’s name] wants to meet you, they want to meet at the top of [famous restaurant] umm, they’re really into ya, come on down, you know, in [number] minutes”
and you go… “no.” And inside you go… “yeah,” but outside you go, “n-n-no.” Because those are all ways to take you out. They exist as soon as you get… Even if you’re not successful, when you get successful… It’s like…
I got successful when I was 23, and that’s a crazy looking arc if you chart it out… And all I gotta do is stay up. And sometimes coming down is something to do, because staying up is really boring. If I go out to a party, most people who ask me to a party ask me there so I can be the famous guy at the party, not so I can meet famous people at the party. I am now… When I’m on a plane from New York to LA or LA to New York, and I go [looking around the room], “there are no famous people on the plane, there’s usually always one famous person on a plane from New York to LA…” and I go, “ahh shit that’s me!! That’s not right!”
Umm, this is a song about… making sure you still love yourself… making sure you still have your head on, making sure you still say no the way your mom would say no. And I will need it every damn day of my life because it’s easier to mess up than it is to stay here.